Please join our community call to share your thoughts, plans, hopes, and dreams for the new year.

Have you made resolutions for the new year?

Are there things you want to accomplish?

What are your thoughts on working to make the world a better place this year?

I enjoyed reading Michael Moore's New Year's Resolutions. They start with 1. Learn the names of the people two doors down from me and invite them over for dinner. 2. Learn how to make dinner. And they end with 10. Keep walking, dude! Here's the rest -

I'd pretty much given up making resolutions, but I like the spirit of Michael Moore's and hope to have some to share with you on the 13th. And of course, this can be another year of living ethically.

"The old light burns low; but, ere it sinks and fails, we kindle from it the crescent flame of a new light. And so, once more, we renew the sacred light of life from year to year, from generation to generation and from age to age."
– Percival Chubb, Leader, the Ethical Society of St. Louis (1912-1933) from the Winter Festival Candle-Lighting Ceremony

The Winter Solstice is on Dec.21 this year; we will hold our ESWoW Winter Solstice Celebration on Dec. 23. The call will be at 5pm Pacific, 6pm Mountain, 7pm Central, 8pm Eastern. The number to join the call is 866-740-1260, access code 5766842#.

In preparation for the winter solstice celebration we will share; I invite you to consider if there is poetry or some other reading you would like to share with the group.

One advantage of doing this in our own homes is that we can each do some things, or not do some things that feel appropriate to us. Some possibilities that come to mind - lighting a candle, or not, spreading some pine branches in your living space, or some other greenery, decorating in a way that feels appropriate to you.

If you plan on participating, it would be helpful to me to know that in advance. I welcome your ideas on how we celebrate the solstice together.

All of America was shocked by the shooting at Sandy Hill Elementary School in Newtown, CT on December 14, 2012. Many are profoundly saddened, others angry. No doubt members of Ethical Culture communities feel either or both emotions.

As we work through the pain, here is are some thoughts from the New York Society:

Reflecting on the Killings in Connecticut
An opportunity for people to share thoughts and feelings in a community of support. The killings in Newtown, CT on Friday, Dec. 14 were horrific. How do we respond? What do we do? How do we make changes so that these repeated mass killings do not continue to occur? What factors in our society contribute to these shootings?

Please join on us on this call to share your responses and possible plans for action.

ESWoW Community CallMONDAY May 7, 2012
Prior to Mother's Day, let's share our experiences of mothers and motherhood, either as mothers ourselves, as the child of a mother, or in society in general.

The call is at 5pm PT, 6pm MT, 7pm CT, and 8pm ET.

The number to join the call is 866-740-1260, access code 5766842#.

AEU Assembly

Our Assembly is an important point in our lives as Ethical Culturists. It is an opportunity to immerse ourselves in what it really means to belong to Ethical Culture. The annual Assembly gives us an opportunity to experience the Ethical Movement in a larger context.

This year, there is especially exciting programming. I am most excited about the social justice programming happening on Saturday, June 16, 2012. The social justice theme is Criminal Justice, and there is a stellar line-up of speakers both from within the Ethical Movement and people working in the criminal justice field.

There will be a special meeting time for ESWoW members to get to meet with each other in person and we are able to renew and make new acquaintances with members of societies from across the country. It is an exciting opportunity to learn from each other, not only through the many workshops but by strengthening communication Rose know if you are planning to attend the Assembly and interested in being an ESWoW delegate.

Two colleagues have had articles published recently and I share them both with you.

Anne Klaeysen, Leader of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, and a recent presenter for an ESWoW Community Call, was published in the NY Times Room for Debate Forum. Her article, "The Founders Preferred E Pluribus Unum," addresses the language found on all US currency. Here's part of what Anne wrote:

The cost is only part of the problem with U.S. currency. As a religious humanist, I am more concerned with the words imprinted on every coin and bill in the United States: “In God We Trust,” a motto that the House of Representatives recently saw fit to reaffirm in a resolution that cited “a crisis of national identity.” A far more inclusive motto, “E pluribus unum,” proposed for the first Great Seal of the United States by John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in 1776, also appears on all of our coins and some of our bills.

Please take a look at the full article and add a comment if you'd like. Read more »

ESWoW Community Call with Catherine Bordeau
Catherine Bordeau joins our ESWoW Community Call to share her knowledge and expertise about women's reproductive rights.

"First, an understanding of reproductive rights includes that women should have the right to her own reproductive decision-making, including voluntary choice in marriage, family formation and determination of the number, timing and spacing of her children and the right to have access to the information and means needed to exercise voluntary choice.

Second, a more specific priority includes the right to sexual and reproductive security, including freedom from sexual violence and coercion, and the right to privacy.Read more »

Women's reproductive rights in America. We thought the books had all been written. That's how it seemed when I was at Powell's Bookstore in Portland, OR. (How's that for subtle name-dropping?) a few days ago looking in the Women's Reproductive Rights section (yes, they are that big that they have a special section - 3 shelves worth). The most current book I found dealing with reproductive rights and women's bodies was from 2004 - The Boundaris of Her Body.

Contraception in all forms became legal in the US decads ago and abortion was legalized in 1973. Don't want to use contraception? Don't. Happen to be lesbian or gay - don't even need to think about contraception. Against abortion? Don't have one, as the bumper sticker says.

Sure there's been backlash over the years, people saying that abortion is taking lives. Interesting that so many of those who are against abortion are for the death penalty, for war. A bit of hypocrysy here? You bet. I have more respect and understanding of people who say that all taking of life is wrong, but I disagree with them saying that other people can't make their own choices.
I thought we had settled that no one is really pro-abortion, and that the important aspect is a woman's ability to be able to make her own choices about her own body.

And then there are so many who are both against using contraception and against abortion - does that baffle you as much as it does me? Read more »

From the Leader
In her blog titled "Barbara Raines meets Richard Feynman", Susan Rose writes about her meeting Barbara Raines both as a young girl and then as a Leader-in-Training. She shares about what a creative person Barbara was, how she was dedicated to the Ethical Movement, and some of the organizations she helped create.

Opening Words
First let me say that I saw as the immediate goal of women in Ethical Culture to work< toward the achievement of full equality for women, inside the Society, not by becoming more like men, but by securing an equal valuingof those qualities which in our culture have been called feminine and denigrated: greater sensitivity to people - greater empathy, compassion, warmth, nutururance; greater awareness of and response to physical surround;greater openness to the immediately felt quality of life, to what is immediately apprehended rather than logically comprehended, i.e., mediated by the intellect. In short, greater valuing and incorporation of intuition, emotionality, human heartedness.

I am not saying women should bow to men intellectually any more than I would deny that there are men who are gifted with these "feminine" attributes. Read more »